


Of Ghosts and Pumpkins

by jake-and-ames (just_inka)



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, B99 Fall 2019 Fic Exchange, F/M, Fluff, Halloween, Meet-Cute, it isn't terribly scary but don't read it if you're easily creeped out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 11:06:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21298427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_inka/pseuds/jake-and-ames
Summary: “I’m Jake.” He has barely uttered the words when something brushes his arm and out of the corner of his eyes, he sees a shadow glide out of the room. Jake can’t help it; he lets out another high-pitched scream. Amy stifles a laugh beside him. “Okay, let’s get you out of here.”Or Jake vs. some ghosts and a children’s safety knife.
Relationships: Jake Peralta & Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Of Ghosts and Pumpkins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fielding](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fielding/gifts).

> this was written for the B99 Fall 2019 Fic Exchange for fielding. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> a huge thank you to [@kamekamelea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamelea/pseuds/kamelea), [@outofinspo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythoughtsmymind), [@cheddar-the-dog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ydididodis/pseuds/ydididodis) and especially [@b99peraltiago](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kufikiria/pseuds/Kufikiria)! without them this fic would be a half-finished, unedited mess.

„Gina, I already hate you for making me do this.” Jake turns around to better judge Gina’s reaction to his accusation when his head hits something strangely wet.

He turns his head and realizes he is face to face with a hand. But not just any hand. The hand seems to have broken out of the wall and looks like it has been dunked into a bucket of red paint. It instantly takes Jake back to a gruesome murder he investigated a few months ago where the perp had completely dismantled the entire body of the victim. Not something he enjoys remembering.

The “What the hell” he is about to utter gets stuck in his throat when the light goes out without any flickering or heads-up.

It takes his eyes a moment to adjust but even when they do, he can’t make out Gina or any of the other people they entered the house with when he looks around the room. It seems like they have vanished without leaving any trace when he was occupied with the sudden darkness and the hand.

Speaking of, Jake takes a few steps back to bring some distance between himself and the body part still sticking out of the wall in front of him. The streaks of what he supposes must be blood look darker and less revolting without the light on but the image of the hand when it was only inches from his face is still fresh on his mind.

The room that was filled with quiet, excited chatter before is completely silent now that apparently anyone but Jake has disappeared from it. That is why Jake can actually hear the fluid from the hand slowly dripping onto the floor.

That finally shakes him out of his trance, and he rushes through the door to the next room, making sure to give the hand a wide berth.

The next room doesn’t do much to calm Jake’s pounding heart. It is only a little brighter than the room he has just left and is completely void of any other people as well. If Jake had to classify the room he’d say the closest thing it resembles is a living room based on the sofa and armchair sitting in the middle in the room and facing a tv straight out of the 80s that surely can’t be working anymore but who the hell stores this many mannequins in his living room?

Jake is no one to judge other people’s design choices and he would not say anything against some statues placed in a living room, but he draws the line at mannequins wearing outfits that seem to stem straight out of the costume department of a circus.

When he tries to decide whether it’d be smarter to leave the room through the door to the left or cross the room to enter a room the seems to be significantly brighter, he realizes that one mannequin, the one dressed like a clown, is slowly but in one smooth motion turning its head towards him until it locks eyes with Jake. He stares into the strangely human eyes for a terrifying second and then charges out of the door to his left.

When he takes a look around, he thanks everyone that might listens that this room is devoid of any creepy mannequins or hands sticking out of walls. Sadly, there’s no sign of Gina in this room either. In fact, he is again alone in this room, but he can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching him. Jake is slightly tempted to turn around and close the door he just stumbled through to make sure the clown mannequin doesn’t follow him, should it mysteriously also gain the ability to walk but solely the possibility that turning around might lead to him staring in the white face of the mannequin makes him move and he leaves the room as quickly as possible.

Nevertheless, the feeling of being followed doesn’t subside. This notion is amplified when he hears the old floorboards crack about two feet behind him. Suddenly he regrets every horror movie he’s ever watched. A thousand possibilities of who (or what) might be behind him creep up in his mind and the only thing he wants is to get out of this damn house. Not caring anymore on which way he will accomplish that, Jake tries to look out of a window to figure out the best escape route. What he is not prepared for though, it to directly look into black eyes framed by the whitest and scraggiest face he has ever seen. The scream Jake lets out at the sight is the most un-John-McClanest sound he has ever made; he is not very proud to admit. He turns around on his heels and starts running, not caring if he is nearing an exit as long as he gets as far away from whatever that was as possible.

By the time he has finally recovered slightly from the shock, he has no idea where he is anymore. Although he frantically sprinted past several other disturbing and creepy objects, he has not seen a single person and there’s no trace of Gina at all. So, when he eventually does see a person, who doesn’t look like she is the embodiment of one of his nightmares, he rushes to stop her by grabbing her arm. “Please, help me get out of here.”

The woman turns around and Jake has to gulp but this time not because half of her face is missing or sporting any other abnormality but because wow, she is beautiful.

She doesn’t look too amused though when she says: “Just so you know, I’m a cop so if you try something stupid in an attempt to get with me, I could have you arrested.”

“To be honest I don’t really care right now as long as you get me out of here”, Jake admits sheepishly.

“Okay? “The woman still seems skeptical but stops trying to free her arm of Jake’s grip who is still holding on to her in panic. “Then come on. Let’s try this way. I’m quite sure it’s the shortest way out.” She starts walking into the direction Jake just came from, but he finally lets go of her and doesn’t move.

“What are you doing? I thought you were so eager to leave?”

“I am”, Jake confirms, “but I came that way. And it was so scary. I don’t want to go back there.”

The woman rolls her eyes but there is a smile tugging at her lips. “What did you expect from a haunted house?”

“Honestly, I don’t know”, Jake confesses, “maybe some actors hiding under bedsheets?”

The woman laughs and Jake is sure that is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard. Hell, he’d even stay longer in this creepy house if it meant hearing it again.

“Also, my friend vanished right in the beginning and it’s super scary being in here on your own.” Jake tries to save some dignity.

“I’m here on my own too and do you see me screaming and holding onto strangers in panic?”, the woman retorts.

Jake has to admit he hadn’t even realized that she was in here on her own as well and she did indeed not seem scared at all.

“How are you not scared? I’m sure I had at least ten heart attacks in the last five minutes.”

“I have seven brothers and half of them used to think that scaring others almost to death was the funniest thing ever and the other half was scared of literally everything. Somehow, I ended up between the groups, calming down the scared ones. I’m pretty much immune to anything scary. I also see a lot of scary things on the job each day.” She shrugs but Jake can hear some pride in her voice as well.

“Well, I’m a cop too but I’m apparently not as fearless as you are. I bet you are a badass cop.” Usually Jake would never be this quick to compliment someone else on their job in a way that makes it sound like he is not the best detective in the world (which he is) but something about this woman makes it very hard to think straight and it doesn’t exactly help that he hasn’t completely recovered from the last scare yet.

The woman smiles and although it is quite dark, Jake could swear that the tips of her ears are turning a light shade of red. “Thanks. I’m Amy by the way.”

“I’m Jake.” He has barely uttered the words when something brushes his arm and out of the corner of his eyes, he sees a shadow glide out of the room. Jake can’t help it; he lets out another high-pitched scream. Amy stifles a laugh beside him. “Okay, let’s get you out of here.”

Amy takes his hand and pulls Jake along.

It is way less scary with Amy by his side, but Jake still tries to make conversation to distract himself from all the spooky things they encounter on their way to the exit. To his surprise the conversation flows a lot more naturally than he’d ever thought possible with anyone he has met barely five minutes before.

He starts by asking her about her job (she’s a beat cop at the 64 but from the sound of it not far from making detective) but they quickly end up arguing about the best cop movie (which is mostly Amy’s fault since she keeps insisting Training Day is better than Die Hard).

Although Jake is even now slightly terrified by the haunted house, he finds himself wishing the way out would take even longer. Besides being easy to talk to Amy is also one of the smartest and funniest people he has ever met, and she is still holding his hand.

Eventually though they reach the exit and while Jake is glad to finally be out of the haunted house, he doesn’t want to let Amy go yet.

Quickly trying to think of an excuse to spend more time with her, Jake looks around the fall festival that is taking place in front of the haunted house.

“Do you want to carve some pumpkins? I’m sure mine is going to be way more awesome than yours.” Based on their conversation so far, Jake had gotten the impression that Amy is rather competitive herself and he is rather pleased to be proved right when she responds with a smile and a dismissive “You wish.”.

They basically race each other to the pumpkin craving booth, where they are handed a pumpkin and a knife each.

Once they’ve sat down across from each other, Jake takes a closer look at his knife and realizes that while Amy has gotten a perfectly fine metal knife, his is suspiciously pink and plasticky.

“Hey, they’ve given me a children’s safety knife. That’s not fair.”

“Oh, are you getting cold feet? Don’t think I will let you get out of the bet that easily.” Amy smirks and gets started on carving her pumpkin.

Not wanting to have a temporal disadvantage in addition to being handicapped by his cutting utensil, Jake starts carving his pumpkin too with only a few more complaints.

The next 15 minutes are spent working on the pumpkins intently, but also with a lot of conversation and trash-talking each other.

Jake has to remind himself to focus on the pumpkin and not on Amy several times and it doesn’t exactly help that his knife always bends the other way when he tries cutting the pumpkin. As a result, what otherwise might have had chances of becoming a decent carved pumpkin ends up looking like a raccoon went to town on it by the time Amy announces that she is finished.

“Okay, I don’t think mine is going to get any better anymore. Let’s get over with”, Jake more or less admits his defeat and rightly so.

Because when they set their pumpkins next to each other to compare them, the difference is obvious.

Amy tries to stifle a chuckle. “What the hell is that meant to be?”

“It was supposed to say, » Welcome to the party, pal! « but that was hard to achieve with that thing”, Jake responds waving around the pink safety knife.

“I guess that means I have won”, Amy states not without glee.

Indeed, her pumpkin has a pair of glasses and a lightning bolt carved into it with care. It is very impressive considering it hasn’t taken her no more than 15 minutes.

“Fine, it does look better than mine.” Jake tries to sound upset but to be honest he has a hard time keeping the smile off his face at the small victory dance Amy is doing. “But I’d like to see you try and carve a pumpkin with something that probably can’t even cut ice cream.”

Amy laughs and tucks her hair behind her ears with both hands.

“Okay, it might have been slightly unfair on you. How about I make it up to you by taking you out for coffee tomorrow?”

Jake can’t believe his luck but before he can respond, someone is sliding into the seat next to him.

“Here you are, I almost thought you got lost in the haunted house and carried off into the realm of the dead by the ghosts.” Jake can sense that Gina is genuinely relieved to have found him despite her joking tone.

“I did get lost. If I hadn’t run into Amy”, he gestures into the direction of the woman in question, who looks slightly confused by the exchange happening in front of her, “I’d probably still be in there hiding behind some curtain. Speaking of, where the hell did you hide? You left me all alone in that creepy house.”

“To be honest I didn’t notice that you stayed behind until two rooms later and when I went looking for you, I ran into this good-looking actress. I think she was supposed to be the bride of Frankenstein or something. Lots of dark curls and very secretive. And not to brag but I got her number. I’d apologize for not finding you, but it seems like I have done you a favor in the end.” She looks between Jake and Amy. “I don’t want to stress you, boo, but I was about to leave. So, if you don’t want to walk home, you better get your date sorted out now.”

Jake is aware that face is burning when he turns to Amy, whose cheeks are covered in a dark red color as well.

“Does the offer to get coffee still stand?”, he asks cautiously, hoping against hope that Amy hasn’t changed her mind with Gina being so upfront and all.

“Sure, give me your number and I’ll text you about that.” Amy hands him her phone.

Gina mumbles something that sounds like “acting like love-struck teenagers” under her breath when Jake types his number into Amy’s phone but when he looks up to see Amy smiling at him sheepishly, he doesn’t even care.

-

Gina and Jake have almost arrived at his place when he receives a new text from an unknown number.

**Hey, Jake!**

** There’s this nice coffee place at the intersection of Rose and Branch. Meet you there at 5 pm tomorrow? **

**Maybe we can watch some horror movies at my place afterwards? You’re kind of cute when you’re scared. **

**Amy **

If it wasn’t sort of precious, Gina would point out that Jake’s smile is big enough to make him look like a Jack O’Lantern.

**Author's Note:**

> yes, the address of the coffee place might be slightly inspired by the Princess Diaries. don't judge me
> 
> come say hi to me on tumblr @jake-and-ames


End file.
